The Conservatives have recently announced their plans to reduce the total number of MPs at Westminster by 10% to 585, but with equal constituency sizes in Wales, which would mean a reduction from the current 40 MPs to 29. They also announced that electorates should vary by no more that +/-3.5% and that boundaries should not have to rigidly follow county boundaries or take geographical size into account. So how might this look in Wales?

Surprisingly, I found it very easy to carve up Wales into equal sized constituencies, which seem to be both natural and logical. I did this using a spreadsheet containing all of Wales’s electoral wards and the Ordnance Survey’s excellent election map system. Then I just started at the 4 corners of Wales and worked in, taking local authority boundaries into consideration wherever practical, but largely ignoring the existing constituencies. My calculations are based on the 2005 electorates, but this could be replicated with more current data, and on this basis Wales’s electoral quota for 29 seats would be 76,745 with a permitted variation of +/- 2,700.

For example, in the South West I started in Pembrokeshire. The County has an electorate of 89,829 so it would be necessary to remove around 13,000 voters to achieve the electoral quota. This could be done by transferring the Tenby area into Carmarthenshire, but it makes more sense both geographically and linguistically to transfer the Preseli area into Ceredigion. This would then create a new seat – I have called Penfro, but this is just a working name and can be changed – with an electorate of 76,067 or 99.1% of the electoral quota.

The Preseli area with an electorate of 13,762 would then be added to Ceredigion which has an electorate of 52,514, and this would give a combined electorate of 66,276. This is still too small at only 86% of the quota, so it would be necessary to find another 10,000 voters from somewhere. I considered extending the seat north to Machynlleth, or east into Powys, but it seemed more logical to take in some of the electoral wards in north-west Carmarthenshire, along the Teifi valley. This then created a new seat – which I have called Teifi - with an electorate of 75,856 or 98.8%.

Carmarthenshire, excluding the Teifi valley wards and the existing Llanelli constituency is getting close to the electoral quota, and by adding some wards in the Burry Port area, a new constituency – Myrddin – is created with an electorate of 100.4% of the quota.

The remaining electorate in Llanelli is only 47,000 which means that it needs to add 30,000 voters from West Glamorgan, and here I propose a new seat of Lwchwr which crosses the boundaries of the preserved counties.

I continued a similar process working in from all 4 corners of Wales, and considering a number of alternative solutions, and arrived at the following proposal.

South West Wales

Penfro

Pembrokeshire, exc Preseli

99%

Teifi

Ceredigion, Preseli & Teifi Valley

99%

Myrddin

Carmarthenshire E & W, exc Teifi Valley

100%

Lwchwr

Llanelli & North Gower

97%

Swansea Gower

Swansea West & South Gower

97%

Swansea Tawe

Swansea East & City Centre

99%

Neath

Neath, Aberafan & SW Powys

97%

Margam

Port Talbot, Porthcawl & Llynfi Valley

99%

South Central Wales

Cardiff East

Cardiff South & Cathays

103%

Cardiff North

Cardiff North & Gabalfa

102%

Cardiff West

Cardiff West & Grangetown

103%

Bro Morgannwg

Vale of Glamorgan, inc Penarth exc Cowbridge

103%

Ogwr

Bridgend Town, Ogmore Valley & Cowbridge

102%

Rhondda Elai

Rhondda & Ely Valley

101%

Cynon Taf

Cynon Valley & Pontypridd Town

98%

South East Wales

Usk

Monmouthshire County & Blaenafon

102%

Newport

Newport County

103%

Cwmbran

Torfaen & North Newport

100%

East Gwent

Blaenau Gwent & East Islwyn

101%

Caerfilli

Caerphilly & West Islwyn

99%

Rhymney

Merthyr, Rhymney & NW Islwyn

98%

South Powys

Brecon, Radnor & S Montgomeryshire, exc SW Powys

99%

North Wales

Gwynedd

Merionydd & Caernarfon

99%

Menai

Ynys Mon, Bangor & Nant Conwy

101%

Conwy

Conwy County

99%

Rhuddlan

Denbighshire Coast & North Flintshire

97%

Flintshire

Flintshire, exc North Flintshire

100%

Wrecsam

Wrexham County

99%

North Powys

North Montgomery & South Denbighshire

99%

This can still be optimised further, but it took me only a few hours to arrive at this solution – so why does the electoral boundary commission take so long?

This solution could also be used for creating 58 dual STV seats for Assembly elections, although I still prefer a solution that is independent of Westminster, with variable sized multi-member seats based on local Authorities.

11
comments:

Anonymous
said...

Bravo Penddu!

But please God, no to 58 AMs from dual seat STV constituencies. We absolutely need to resist a reduction in the size of the NAW. And the likely disproportionality of only 2 members is also a huge problem....

How about making the case for 30MPs and then twinning to provide for 15X4 seat STV constituencies? The problem with basing constituencies on the LAs is that the pols. will surely have to bite the bullet on this and reform/reduce their numbers...and sooner rather than later.

Pen ddu - nice work, these new constituencies named after rivers reminds me of the division of Yugoslavia in the 1930s when the King Aleksander I tried to come up with more neutral names for the territories in the new state:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Banovine_kj.jpg

http://stwnsh.com/jugoslavia

Can we have a Welsh king too to go with the new constituencies ... (with the exception of Cardiff and Swansea) they'd make quite good counties too ;-)

Good try and I don't think from a Northern pont of view there are too manny controversies. I can see a few people having problems with the Bangor and Anglesey seat stretching to Nant Conwy. Personally, I don't think it's too bad. It makes sense in some ways, with the A5 and it being a Welsh-speaking area.

Can I ask what your Conwy seat contains? It seems to stretch to Arllechwedd in Bangor, but this would make sense in the other seat. If you wanted to make a more regularly-shaped seat, it might be an idea to add Nant Conwy onto Conwy but add Llanfairfechan and perhaps Penmaenmawr to Bangor. Llanfairfechan definitely socially and culturally looks to Bangor rather than Conwy or Llandudno. Penmaenmawr goes either way. Nant Conwy looks up the Valley to Conwy and Llandudno.

I like your South Denbighshire/North Powys seat. Would be an interesting seat. I suppose it and Conwy would be Tory. North Flint and North Denbighs would be a Labour/Tory marginal (the parts coming from Flintshite would be the best Tory parts of Delyn). The rest would be strongly Labour and Albert Owen would be very happy with Bangor/Anglesey. Plaid would hate these boundaries from a potential 3 seats in the North down to 1 (that one a banker mind).

A lot of this makes sense. There are already members of the Labour party in areas like the Llynfi Valley who are looking to the future. They don't want to go with Bridgend and the link with Aberavon to the west is the obvious one. I'm assuming that Porthcawl is included in this new seat because it was part of the old Aberavon constituency until 1983.

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